Dr. Nicholas Sloboda

Chair, Professor

I began teaching at UW-Superior in 1999. Prior to that I was teaching at the University of Alabama for two years. Previously, I had taught at McGill where I had received my Ph.D. and M.A.

I completed my undergraduate primarily at the University of Alberta (with some work at the University of British Columbia). My undergraduate work was in Creative Writing, Comparative Literature, and Slavic Studies (namely Ukrainian and Russian literature and early film).

My master's work was also in Comparative Literature: I focused on the relationship between the literary and visual arts, particularly in modernist literature. Here I considered Hemingway's aesthetics in terms of his attention to painters like Cezanne and Goya.

My doctoral work was in Comparative Literature but I also worked in English and graduated from that program. My comprehensives were on Shakespeare's 'problem plays' (primarily Troilus and Cressida), modernist poets like Louis Zukofsky and movements like objectivism and how such movements influenced the development of modernist poetry, and, finally, postmodernist expression as developed through writers like Donald Bartheleme. My thesis work explored more contemporary multi-ethnic American writers and their unique position between postmodernism and post-colonialism. Here, I considered a range of writers including Cristina Garcia, Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, Amy Tan, Askold Melnyczuk, Julie Shigekuni, Julie Dash, Charlotte Sherman, and others.

Since coming to the UW-Superior, I have developed a survey course in multi-ethnic American literature which is also part of the university's general education offerings. In addition, I have developed several upper-division courses including a course on contemporary multi-ethnic American novels, a course on studies in the short story, a course on Hemingway, a course on modernist poetry and drama, a course on Stephen Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and Flannery O'Connor, and, finally, a course on the Avant Garde.

Recently, I have been working with Bishop's University, a well-known liberal arts university in Quebec, on creating an exchange program with them. We have now established a bi-lateral agreement between our two universities. UW-Superior students can either take more advanced courses in French language and literature at Bishop's or can study, in English, in any other field.